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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Pecan-Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake Needs Finishing Touch

Got power and a snow day? Oven working? Help me perfect this coffee cake recipe! And who doesn't love coffee cake on a snowy morning?

This recipe began as Coffee Cake Supreme on allrecipes.com. I got this cool app for allrecipes.com that I can use on my Kindle Fire. Select which type of meal you want, select the ingredients and voila! Recipes pop up for you. The Coffee Cake Supreme recipe indicated the recipe is flexible - you can add mashed bananas, chocolate chips, vary some of the ingredients and whatnot.

Knowing that calories spent on something like this are useless if chocolate is not involved, I made a Pecan-Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake recipe from their recipe. And I need your help to perfect it. The part I most need your help with is at the end with how best to include the streusel on top. I thought the rest of the cake was yummy good, but adjust as you like (and let us know how you did it!).

Make streusel: Combine all streusel ingredients except the chocolate chips. Cut with 2 knives or pastry mixer until the butter is pea-sized. Stir in 1/2 cup chocolate chips.

Make cake: In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter using a mixer. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Stir into the creamed mixture by hand. If you over mix, cake will be more dry and tough.

Combine the water, vanilla and yogurt in small bowl. Stir into the cake mixture by hand. Add 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Stir into the batter.

HERE IS WHERE I NEED YOUR HELP!

The option I took that turned out okay, but the top of the cake definitely needed something. Like streusel.

This is what I did following the method from the allrecipes one:

Pour half the cake batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle half of the streusel over it, then top with the remaining batter, and sprinkle with remaining streusel. Bake for approximately 50 minutes in preheated oven. Cool

in pan for 10 minutes, then invert on a plate or wire rack to cool completely.

That means the streusel is on the bottom of the cake. The baked product clearly needs it on the top! The cake comes out moist and tender, but it needs the topping. I tried a standard powdered sugar glaze, but I preferred the cake nekkid to that. It needs the streusel on top. If I put the streusel in the pan first, obviously it will stick, so nix on that. Sprinkling it on top after the cake is baked won't work.

Is there no hope for it but to bake it in a 13x9 pan, sprinkling the last half of the streusel on top? If so, how long does it take to bake for that shape pan?

Up to the challenge? HELP ME PERFECT THE RECIPE! Get baking. Go on. You know you have snow-induced boredom by now anyway. You can only watch so much Judge Judy. In my case, a lot. But that's neither here nor there. Let me know your results. I love it when you bake.